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Walters Ms. W.788, Ethiopian scroll with angels and talismans

This scroll was created in the eighteenth century for a woman named Marta. Having once been possessed by a devil, she had
this prayer scroll made as a way to ward off evil. Containing prayers against demons, as well as talismans and a depiction
of a guardian angel (perhaps Phanuel, who is invoked in one of the prayers), the scroll was intended to be worn as an apotropaic
device. Ethiopian prayer scrolls were made to be the length of the person who commissioned them, thereby protecting the owner
from head to toe; this one is 165.7 cm, making Marta 5'5" tall.

Getatchew Haile, "Introduction to the Scrolls of the Ethiopian Spiritual Healing." in Getatchew Haile et al, Catalogue of
the Ethiopic Manuscript Imaging Project, vol. 1 (2009), pp. xxxiii-l (for a study of the contents and purposes of the Ethiopic
scrolls in general).

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It is requested that copies of any published articles based on the information in this data set be sent to the curator of
manuscripts, The Walters Art Museum, 600 North Charles Street, Baltimore MD 21201.